Quote

Dance constitutes a true recapturing of... freedom and childish play.

Agnes de Mille

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Agnes de Mille
Age: 88 †
Born: 1905
Born: September 18
Died: 1993
Died: October 6
Ballet Dancer
Ballet Master
Choreographer
Dancer
Theatrical Director
Harlem
New York
Freedom
True
Play
Childish
Constitutes
Dance

More quotes by Agnes de Mille

Image
The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Dancing is such a despised and dishonored trade that if you tell a doctor or a laywer you do choreography he'll look at you as if you were a hummingbird. Dancers don't get invited to visit people. It is assumed a boy dancer will run off with the spoons and a girl with the head of the house.
Agnes de Mille
Image
I had had to learn the difference between the bearable fatigue and the unbearable, the fatigue of fear. The first can be cured by a night's sleep the second kills.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Many other women have kicked higher, balanced longer, or turned faster. These are poor substitutes for passion.
Agnes de Mille
Image
One of the good things about my having some recognition is that I can do something for the people I think ought to have more and correct some of the matters fate fails to take care of.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Who am I?, the artist asks. And he devotes his whole life to finding out.
Agnes de Mille
Image
No white man uses his feet the way an Indian does. He talks to the earth.
Agnes de Mille
Image
I want one word on my tombstone - dancer.
Agnes de Mille
Image
I studied the way I danced- to the point of dropping.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Dance in the body you have.
Agnes de Mille
Image
To make up a dance, I still need, as I needed then, a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea.
Agnes de Mille
Image
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking.
Agnes de Mille
Image
When I dance I am really meditating rather then performing for an audience. I am completely absorbed by the music and the steps I choose to respond to the music.
Agnes de Mille
Image
I learned three important things in college-to use a library, to memorize quickly and visually, to drop asleep at any time given a horizontal surface and fifteen minutes. What I could not learn was to think creatively on schedule.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.
Agnes de Mille
Image
The choreographic process is exhausting. It happens on one's feet after hours of work, and the energy required is roughly the equivalent of writing a novel and winning a tennis match simultaneously.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Modern dancers give a sinister portent about our times. The dancers don't even look at one another. They are just a lot of isolated individuals jiggling in a kind of self-hypnosis and dancing with others only to remind themselves that we are not completely alone in this world.
Agnes de Mille
Image
Find the passion. It takes great passion and great energy to do anything creative. I would go so far as to say you can't do it without that passion.
Agnes de Mille
Image
We can't stand silence, because silence induces thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.
Agnes de Mille